Because of conscience

Into the company of Indians gathered around the imperturbable Marc and the prisoner suddenly walked Jeanne Crepin, whose coming was received with grunts of disapproval. She had an unpleasant way of appearing before these red brethren when she was least expected. They gave her a certain respect and even affectionate admiration, but they were not to be balked by a woman in their revenge. Lendert’s scalp was a possession not to be despised, and it had required the combined strategy of Jeanne and Ricard to prevent its being taken on that homeward march. Jeanne had insisted that he was Ricard’s prisoner and had refused to leave him while Ricard made a hasty journey in search of Petit Marc. After that Petit Marc took possession.

“You quarrel over the man,” he said to them. “One brother says he is mine, another he is mine. I am judge between you. He is neither the one’s nor the other’s. Ricard took him, as every one knows, but it was because the Frenchman, your leader, told him to do it, and therefore if he belongs to any one it is to François, but he does not belong to him. He belongs to Yonondio, and to him he must be delivered at last. If the Frenchman, François Sharp Eyes, were here he would tell you so, but he is slain and he cannot deliver him up to Yonondio. Will Yonondio protect you? Will he believe you to be his friends when you steal from him his prisoners? Yet Yonondio loves François Sharp Eyes, and he would give him to him because he is his.”

“The Frenchman, Sharp Eyes, is slain,” said an old chief. “What is my brother saying? How does he expect that the slain shall come and claim his prisoner?”

“François Sharp Eyes is not slain,” returned Marc, racking his brain for a device to lengthen the time for Lendert. “Moreover, my brothers forget that there are many who have lost friends in this war, and even in this battle, therefore it is but right and according to custom that this prisoner shall be delivered to one who has lost a friend in war. So only can the cloud be driven away which hangs over that one to whom grief has come.”

“My brother speaks what is true,” agreed the old chief, “and the prisoner must be given to one who has lost a friend in this battle.”

Then came a long discussion as to who should possess Lendert, and finally this matter was settled by his being handed over to one Red Feather. Petit Marc protested all the while that it was no one’s right to kill the man, and that the governor, Frontenac, whom the Indians called Yonondio, would tell their father, the King of France, and that he would be very angry that they had kept any prisoner from him. Nevertheless, every now and then murmurs arose, and the life of Lendert hung in the balance whenever news of a raid from the Iroquois aroused a new desire for revenge in Lendert’s captors.

At last came the word that a bloody skirmish had taken place and that here was new cause for maltreatment of this representative of the enemy. Encouraged by Petit Marc, Lendert bore himself stoically while the wily Marc cast about for a reason to delay the expected torture. Bound to a tree and hopelessly waiting the pleasure of his tormentors, Lendert lay when Jeanne appeared.

“To whom do you say this man belongs?” she asked, at the same time touching him contemptuously with the toe of her moccasin. “You say he is Red Feather’s. I say he is not. I say that no one but François Sharp Eyes has a right to him.”

“Wah!” grunted the old chief, “the Man-Wife has been drinking the new sap of the fever-tree and it has touched her brain. Do dead bodies desire to take away prisoners from the living?”

Jeanne tossed up her chin. “No, but the living have a right to their own. See, my brothers, François Sharp Eyes is here.” With a wave of her hand she indicated the approach of Ricard and Edouard with their burden.

“And not a minute too soon,” growled Petit Marc. “It was getting to be close quarters for him.”

Even the most impassive of the redskins stared to see the white face of François appear. Lendert struggled in his bonds and glared at this unexpected presence.

“Where is the prisoner?” asked François. “Place me near him.” He was laid under the tree where Lendert was bound.

“You see me, my brothers,” François began. “You ask if a dead body desires to take possession of a living one. Behold a dead body, this one of mine. As the chill of winter creeps farther and farther from the north, so over this body of mine creeps the chill of death; and who has caused this to happen? The same enemy who has robbed Red Feather of his son. Am I not worse off than Red Feather? He has another son, two or three of them. I have but my one body and it is worse than useless; only a frame to fasten this head upon. Was it not I who led you against the English? Said I not, We will have revenge for those indignities of the English and the Dutch and the Iroquois? You have come home in safety; I have been all these months a prisoner; and look at me. Who shall say that I should not have body for body?”

The Indians listened solemnly. Then one spoke up. “Our brother speaks well, but he has still his head. We will give him the body of the white man and we will take the head.”

This was received with much approval by the rest of the Indians, and Petit Marc gave a short laugh. The grim humor of the speech struck him. “They have you there,” he said aside to François.

“Pah!” François raised his hand. “Of what use is a body which cannot move? And if you deprive me of the head, how, then, can the body move for me? My living body has been taken; for it I demand a living body in return. This is what Yonondio would accord me. Call the head yours if you wish. I am willing, but how will it serve me to have two useless bodies? My brothers mock me; they wish to double my burdens by giving me two loads to carry, as if one were not enough. Who will be feet for my feet, legs for my legs? Who will run for me if I have not these living legs to do my will? And what will Yonondio say when I tell him. They have given me a dead man to bring to you as a prisoner?”

This was another matter for consideration, but the decision was not repealed. “The head is Red Feather’s, the body belongs to François Sharp Eyes. If François takes away the head which is Red Feather’s, how, then, will any one know that it belongs to his brother?”

It was François who solved the difficulty. “It will not be so bad as it might be, and it is that or his head,” he said in an undertone to Petit Marc. “François Sharp Eyes, your brother, will tell you what to do,” he went on to say. “Let Red Feather put his mark upon the man; let him brand him upon the cheek, so will all know that it is the head of Red Feather though the body follow François.”

The old chief nodded approval. “Our brother speaks with wisdom; it shall be as he desires. Yonondio will then perceive that we have done as he would command, and it will be a sign to him that the man was in our hands but that we desire to please our father, and that we have delivered the prisoner to François.”

Finding that they were not to be deprived of all entertainment, the company proceeded, with much ceremony, to see to it that upon Lendert’s cheek was branded a queer, small red feather. Then followed a feast and much powwowing, and at last Lendert was free.

As he faced his old enemy he felt that he would almost rather have suffered greater torture than to be handed over to this man. What further diabolical intention had he, who was mighty even in his helplessness? He had not opened his lips during all this ceremony, not even to ask word of his friends, of Alaine, whom Jeanne had left lying on the ground in feigned mortal hurt. Nor did he speak when his stiffened and cramped limbs followed the litter to Jeanne’s lodge. Jeanne tramped along by his side, but turned her talk to Petit Marc, for she saw that Lendert was in no mood for conversation. It was only when they were arrived at her door that she turned to François and said, “And Alaine, what of her?”

“To-day she is with her friends,” François told her. “She is in New Rochelle, poor little soul.” He turned his eyes upon Lendert. “Come here, if you please, my friend. I have done you and Mademoiselle Hervieu much wrong. I do not know why I disliked you; probably because you are Dutch and the enemy of my country, and because you came between me and my revenge. She will tell you all, for I send you to her. I am not going to live, and I made this journey to attain this object, to find you. I send you back to her you love and to her I have wronged. I believe she will forgive me. I know what a great love is, and I respect yours. Go with it to Mademoiselle Hervieu and say, I am François Dupont’s gift to you. I love you so deeply that I can even endure it that he whom I hate has been the means of liberating me and that it is from his hands that you receive me back to your heart. I do not ask your forgiveness, Lendert Verplanck; only angels can forgive utterly, and it is an angel who waits for you there in New Rochelle.”

“I thank you, mynheer,” said Lendert, brokenly. “God knows I love her.”

“And you will marry her. Yes, I know. I have heard it all from the lips of that little Trynje and from her good mother and her better lover.” His eyes softened as he spoke of Adriaen. “Good boy! good boy! I love that lad,” he said, thoughtfully. “I know your mother’s feeling, but you will say to her that the man who gave up his revenge and his will that he might go out of the world worthy of one who waits for him up there——” He gave a quick, short sigh. “I believe that! I believe that!” he said, passionately. “She waits for me. Well, then, say to your mother this man, half dead, took his poor body over hill and dale, through forest and down-stream, that he might right a wrong, and he gives you back your son, but in return he asks that you do not stand between him and happiness. This man, François Dupont, you will tell her what became of his strong will, and how Heaven treated him for his vainglory and stubbornness. I am not good; I am not religious, not I, but I know when I am beaten, and I can recognize the stroke when it comes. I am so near death that I can see the meaning of things. You will tell her of me and of what I say. Yet, because even then, in her strength and her power of health, she still refuses, there is something else. It will be told you in good time. Now, boys, we rest here for to-night, and to-morrow take me on to Quebec. I wish to die under the flag which waved above me when I fought there upon the heights of Quebec. I shall live to get there,—I shall do that. You will take me, Ricard, and you, Edouard, and Toito, my man? So now, you, M. Verplanck, must have safe escort to the other side of the river, and then you can go on.”

Lendert bowed his head in assent. He had not even words now for this strange man, whose devotion to a purpose rose above his egotism and ambitions. But the young Dutchman carried all this in his heart, and when the next morning he saw François placed in the canoe which was to bear him upon his last journey before he should enter that darker river, the feeling of angry resentment, of hatred and revenge, gave way. It had been slowly growing less and less ever since the hour when he was freed, and he leaned over from the side of his own canoe to touch the hand of François, not now in anger nor in assault, but in pity and gratitude.

“Mynheer Dupont,” he said, “you told me that Mademoiselle Hervieu would forgive you, that it was an angel I should find when I return. Then, I cannot go to her with a black heart, and if I am your gift to her, one does not give angels as worthless a thing as a man who hates his deliverer. And so, mynheer, if you wish my forgiveness, here it is, and if you have aught against me, I pray you, in turn, let me ask your pardon for it.”

François turned his feverishly bright eyes upon him. “Head of Red Feather and body that is mine,” he said, with a whimsical smile, “you are of no account at all beside the heart which is Alaine Hervieu’s, and which is great enough to do this. Will you bend your head closer, monsieur?”

Lendert obeyed, and François touched his lips to the burning mark, which stood out red and inflamed, even though Jeanne’s soothing applications had taken away the worst of its fire. “When you go to Alaine, tell her so I have dedicated this mark and bear her my long farewell.”

The canoes drifted apart, one going up stream, the other down, and to those who had best known him, who had suffered with and by him, whose fear had been turned into compassion, François Dupont became but a memory, yet from the memory at last all bitterness vanished, and he was remembered as one to whom reverence and gratitude were due.

The long and wearisome journey made by Lendert at last brought him to the house from which he had lately been cast out. But here was no mother to welcome him or to upbraid him, for Madam De Vries had gone to New York after Trynje’s wedding. She felt a miserable satisfaction in nursing her resentment towards Alaine, yet was of a dozen minds about her. Trynje was no longer to be treated as a daughter, and the one whom her son had loved ought rightly to have taken her place. This Madam conceded to herself, but grew hot and angry at the thought, and so at last she shut herself away from her friends and brooded over it all. As day after day passed and the hopelessness of ever seeing Lendert again came over her, she grew more and more bitter, outwardly, and more and more yielding, inwardly, so that if, at certain moments, Alaine had appeared, she would have wept with her and have taken her to her heart. A dozen times she started to make the journey to New Rochelle, where she knew Alaine to be, and as often she fell back in her chair, a slave to her obstinacy and self-pity.

It was one morning, six months after the events of the day, which it seemed to Madam De Vries must always pass in procession before her upon her first waking, that she suddenly decided to return to her home. “I cannot escape it wherever I go,” she moaned; “I am idle here, and I brood too much. I will go to work. I will change everything; I will busy myself doing that. I will have nothing as it used to be, and so in time I may be able to live in a measure contented.”

And thus it happened that the canoe bearing Lendert to New York passed the spot where his mother was resting overnight upon her homeward journey.

While Lendert was proceeding on his way some one else was nearing New York with hope and longing. M. Theodore Hervieu, late engagé upon the island of Dominica, was free at last and was now in possession of the knowledge of his daughter’s whereabouts. These facts had come to him in that peculiar way which gives credence to the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. He had not fared badly, when all is told, for he was fortunate in falling into the hands of a compassionate master, who gave him such liberty as was his due and set him about tasks which were not heavy. It was, however, not upon the island of Guadaloupa, but upon St. Domingo, that he was landed, and having been shipped under a name differing somewhat from his own, he was not discovered by those who had gone in search of him, remaining himself all the while ignorant of what had become of his daughter. Letters sent to France assured him that she had fled the country; letters sent to England remained unanswered, therefore in patience possessing his soul M. Hervieu waited till an event occurred which turned the tide of his affairs.

One morning from a high rock upon the coast of Guadaloupa there might have been seen dangling a rope, and from it swung a man, looking below him to make sure of how far he might drop if he let go. Presently the rope swung free of its burden, and the man, limping a little, ran along the shore and was not long in reaching a small boat, which immediately set out for the neighboring island of Dominica. After six months of miserable bondage Pierre Boutillier had a second time escaped, and as fate would have it, he found himself received upon the plantation of one Madame Valleau, and was taken into that lady’s presence by her secretary, whom she addressed as M. Hervet.

The pitiful condition of the escaped man excited Madame’s pity as she directed that he be given the best that the place could afford, and herself invited him to be her guest at dinner.

Madame Valleau had been a widow a little over two years. She was young and bewitching, and having married an elderly man who seemed more like a father than a husband to her, she was ready to fall in love when the proper person should present himself, and this happened to be Pierre Boutillier, for, as did Desdemona, “she loved him for the dangers he had passed,” and found in him a hero whom fate had cast at her feet.

Pierre had not been under her roof a week when she began to reproach him for his melancholy. “Thy grave and sombre face needs a different medicine to alter its expression from that I have to offer,” she said one day. “M. Hervet, there, for all he has a missing daughter somewhere in the world, does not look so melancholy. Who is it you have left behind?” She gave a coquettish glance at the unresponsive Pierre, who shook his head.

“No kin of mine waits for me anywhere, for all perished under the hand of persecution in France.”

Madame Felice Valleau tapped her foot reflectively. “And that is why you do not approve of me, I suppose. I am not Protestant.”

“I never said, madame, that I did not approve of you. Who am I that I should abuse your bounty by vilifying you? Yet, I would you were Protestant.”

“And suppose I were, then would I see you smile?”

“Without doubt I should smile that Providence had brought me into such a favorable haven of refuge.”

“Then turn your head this way. I am Protestant and M. Hervet knows it. It was not my husband’s belief, but he did not cross me in it, and he was always kind to those of my faith. It was his way to say that each man was accountable to his own conscience for his faith, and he had no right to persecute others for thinking the same. He took M. Hervet into his employ, knowing him to be a Huguenot, but seeing him a gentleman and a good man of business. He finally made him his secretary, in which office in this house he still continues, though he is still an engagé, and it will be some time before he can have his freedom. I think he will likely wish to remain here if he can realize something from the estates he left in France. There is a secret about that too, which I will tell you some day. There are not bad opportunities in this place for one who has M. Hervet’s ability, and I think he will do well to remain. But now let us return to our former subject. I see no reason for your melancholy, for I assure you that I shall treat you well.”

“I do not doubt it, madame, and as for my grave manner, one who has suffered much cannot at once assume the gayety of those always free from care.”

The tears came to the eyes of Madame Valleau. “It shall be my dearest privilege to drive that gloom away from one who has borne so much for the sake of my religion. Tell me again of that wild escape of yours. And why did you return when once you had freed yourself? I can never wring from you why you did that. Can you not tell me?” She looked at him with melting dark eyes and laid her soft warm hand upon his arm. “Tell me,” she said in a beseeching voice.

Pierre hesitated. He felt the woman’s witchery, and told himself that there was not any reason why he should not confess that his was a mission of love, a sacrifice because of his devotion to Alaine. Yet he hesitated. After a pause, in which the silken garments of the pretty widow swept his feet and the entreaty in her eyes deepened, he said, slowly, “I returned that I might seek and liberate some one who, like myself, had been sent into slavery.”

“He must have been very dear to you.”

“I never saw him.”

“What!” Felice Valleau leaned nearer. “Then it was for a woman you did it. Who is she? Tell me. Who is she?”

“Her name is Alaine Hervieu,” Pierre answered in response to an irresistible impulse.

“Alaine Hervieu!” Felice screamed. Then a little light laugh rippled from her red lips. “Very well, then, you have come to the right place. I can find him for you. But first—— No, no,” as Pierre’s eager questions leaped to his lips. “No, not yet. Do you love this Alaine Hervieu madly? Would life be a blank without her?”

Pierre was silent.

“Does she love you?”

“I do not know. I did not demand that she should tell me. She made no promise. I would not allow that, but it was that if her father desired, she would marry me when I returned with him.”

Madame laughed again, and then leaned forward, her chin resting in one dainty palm, her soft round arm almost touching Pierre as he sat by her side. After a silence she looked at him with alluring, velvety eyes. “She does not love you. No, she does not. She would never have allowed you to leave her if she had. She would have flung herself into your arms and have implored you to stay. No, no.”

“She did beg me not.”

“But she did not do so with tears and sighs and kisses, with her heart in her eyes. She thought of her father first.”

“Ye-es.” The answer came reluctantly.

“Then, I repeat, she does not love you as you loved her. Why must you love her, Monsieur Pierre? By this time she has forgotten you.”

“No; she will wait till the year is out.”

“And will then marry some one else?”

“Perhaps.”

“And when is the year up?”

“In three months.”

“Then, in that time she shall see her father, if—if—— Listen, monsieur. If I let him go I shall demand the sacrifice you were willing to make. You were willing to give yourself for him. Then I shall demand the exchange. You will do this willingly?”

“Give myself to you?”

“Yes.” Felice arose. She looked down at him with a soft luminous expression. “Pierre, would it be such a sorry lot to remain with me? Could I not make you happy? This girl does not love you. I repeat it. In your heart you do not feel that she does, and will you force her to marry you because her father may demand it?”

“A thousand times no.”

“And if, after you had gone back, you were to find that she loved some one else would it not be harder then to give her up, who now is but a dream?”

“It would be harder.”

“Then—— You are very humble, too humble, Pierre Boutillier; many men have sued on their knees for what is yours on your own conditions. I give you M. Theodore Hervieu, my secretary, and you give yourself to me.”

“M. Hervet?”

“The same.”

Pierre too had arisen and was looking down at the graceful figure clad in its filmy silken robes. “And if I do not,” he said, hesitatingly, and pressing his hand over his eyes.

“Then I refuse to give up my slave, the man Thomas Hervet.” She drew herself away a few steps. “You are very hard, very unresponsive, very ungrateful, Pierre Boutillier. I do not wonder that Alaine did not love you.”

Pierre removed his hand from his eyes. He saw that there were tears standing in the soft eyes and that the bewitching red lips were quivering like a hurt child’s. He made a step forward. “Madame,” he hastened to say, “I accept. I offer you this poor, heavy-eyed, ungainly Pierre Boutillier in exchange for Theodore Hervieu. I am yours, madame, do as you will with me.” He knelt at her feet.

Felice bent over and kissed him gently on the head. “I would make you my slave,” she said, softly. “And as for myself, take my hands; they are your willing servitors: take my heart; it is in chains that you have forged.”

And so it happened that Pierre Boutillier became the head of a large estate, and the husband of the pretty widow of Eugene Valleau.

M. Hervieu’s surprise came not in the news of the approaching marriage, but in the stranger fact that here was one who knew his daughter and who had come in search of him. “But I am still an engagé,” he said, “and I have no money for my passage to Manhatte.”

“You are not an engagé, and you are not penniless,” Felice told him. “M. Valleau believed that it would be better for you to serve out your time here, thinking it would not be altogether disagreeable to you.”

“It has been far otherwise. Your kindness and that of M. Valleau give me no unhappy recollection of my bondage,” he answered.

“Before my husband died,” Madame Valleau told him, “he gave me this,” she handed him a paper, “and told me that if ever you should wish to leave me, and it seemed advisable that you should do so, that you were to receive from my hands the amount brought by the sale of certain estates of yours in France, put up for sale and purchased by him for you. By his will he leaves that to you. ‘It is not a great gift,’ he said, ‘but it will start our friend again in some good enterprise when he is ready to take his place with his friends in another country. He has served me well for no wages, and I am doing only what is just in requiting for his services.’”

“Madame!” M. Hervieu was overcome, and could only murmur some unintelligible words of thanks.

“Therefore,” continued Felice, “if you will kindly remain with me until I am married, I will wish you God-speed. And will you please ask your daughter to write to me and send it by a safe hand, and will you give her this little packet?”

M. Hervieu promised, and two weeks later he left the island of St. Domingo, and set sail for the colony of New Netherlands, then beginning to be known as New York.

“This is a better voyage than the last I made,” he said to the captain of the ship in which he had taken passage; “in that I, with fifty others, was wedged into a space scarce big enough for a breath.”

The good Dutchman looked his sympathy; he had taken on this passenger who was willing to pay his way, and the thrifty man did not despise the money, though his was but a small merchantman. He was making the return trip to New York and had seen something of the life of the engagé. “You vas locky to get owet alretty,” he remarked.

M. Hervieu drew a long, free breath. It was good to take in the air of absolute liberty once more.

“Vat you vas calt?” asked the skipper. He must converse in English with this passenger who knew only a little of that language and French.

“I am called Theodore Hervieu now,” was the reply.

The skipper took the pipe from his mouth and stared at his companion. “Py tam!” he exclaimed. And then he lapsed into a silence from which no remark of M. Hervieu aroused him for half an hour.